When a cellular
wireless communication device can receive communication from multiple (more than one) transmission sources, two steps are performed. First, a block of
source data made up of M packets is coded (encoded) such that the block of
source data can be derived at the
receiver from any K (K=M+A) out of the N packets, where A<M, M<N and N is the total number of coded packets. Second, different subsets of the N packets are sent from each of the transmission sources. The cellular
wireless communication device can receive packets from multiple transmission sources. For example, the block of
source data can be coded by Reed-Solomon (RS) coding or rateless coding such as
Tornado coding or Raptor coding. (Sometimes they are also called Fountain Codes). An example of the multiple sources is multiple base stations in a
cellular communication system. Other examples of the multiple sources include multiple sectors, multiple RF channels (multiple frequencies), multiple beams (using a
smart antenna system) multiple sets of tones (in an
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing based
system), and multi-code channel communication systems. Possible applications include W-CDMA, Wi-Max, etc. In real-time applications, such as, for example, voice communications, the real-time requirement may be satisfied in many cases in which the real-time requirements would otherwise fail. For example, in voice over
internet protocol (VoIP) communications, a voice call may be clearer, or may avoid being dropped. In another example, better streaming video can be achieved.